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Dane County lakes share Clear Lake's pain

When the lake district controlling Fish, Crystal and Mud lakes in Dane County finally got the money to pump water out of the lakes, Jeff Melville thought his flooding troubles were almost over.

Two and a half years later, his vacation home still is surrounded by water.

The effort to pump the lakes on the Dane-Columbia county line has been mired by obstacles and frustration, but Melville and others believe their efforts finally are paying off—if they can get the final permit to pump water into the Wisconsin River.

The story could offer lessons to neighbors of Clear Lake in Milton Township. Like Fish, Crystal and Mud lakes, Clear Lake is a "seepage" lake with no inlets or outlets that has risen alarmingly in recent years.

But Clear Lake could face even more obstacles than Fish, Crystal and Mud lakes, officials said. The lake is at the bottom of an 80-foot basin and more than a mile from the closest body of water.

"I wish I had a solution to those folks on Clear Lake, but we didn't see any immediate, inexpensive solution," said Ken Johnson, water leader for the southcentral region of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Pumping at Fish, Crystal and Mud lakes has been neither immediate nor inexpensive. The water started rising there about 25 years ago and reached a crisis about 10 years ago, Melville said. (All three lakes are connected through the underground water table.)

Residents spent years trying to find a solution.

A 2001 study from the U.S. Geological Survey said pumping would help, but the community needed money and permits. They eventually received $250,000 from state and county governments and formed a lake district to raise the rest.

The lake district—of which Melville is a board member—started pumping in 2006. So far, the project has cost about $600,000.

The project has not gone smoothly. The district originally installed 2 1/2 miles of pipe to pump water from Mud Lake into an infiltration base—similar to a retention pond—where water could sink into the ground and rejoin the water table.

The district tried several infiltration bases, but none worked.

Then this summer, the lake rose another 3 feet after record rains.

In late July, the district got an emergency permit to pump water directly into the Wisconsin River. Since then, the water has gone down about a foot, but half of that is probably from evaporation, Johnson said.

Still, he said a drop of 6 to 8 inches is a step forward.

"Eight inches is a lot to those people on the lake," he said.

The emergency permit expires Dec. 15, and the lake district is hoping for a permanent permit to replace it, Melville said.

"It appears to us, anyway, that the pump is having an effect," he said, though he added not everyone agrees.

But pumping might not be the answer to Clear Lake's woes. The community would have to pump water uphill, and the nearest tributary to the Rock River is more than a mile away, Johnson said.

Melville advises Clear Lake neighbors to make sure pumping will work before embarking on a project. Pumping is expensive, especially when there aren't many homes and businesses around the lake to share the costs.

It's not certain pumping would work in Clear Lake. Seepage lakes are prone to wild fluctuations, and they're hard to control, Johnson said. Plus, the region has been getting more of the catastrophic snow and rainstorms that caused Clear Lake to rise in the first place.

"You can put in a system to try to fix your existing problem, but the problem might be getting worse," he said.

Though residents might not like to hear it, the best solutions might be raising houses or moving to higher ground, he said.

"We looked," he said, "and we just didn't see any obvious answers to their dilemma."